Property Law and Real Estate Commons^™

Financing America's Public Infrastructure: Issues For Local Governments, Shelley C. Vazmina

Akron Law Review

This comment examines the role state and local government financing has played in America's infrastructure crisis. This comment also recognizes that infrastructure financing issues in declining cities differ from infrastructure issues due to population expansion.

Part I is particularly relevant to declining cities. It reviews traditional methods by which state and local government obtain operating revenues, and the use of these revenues for infrastructure. It discusses trends and developments which have made traditional financing schemes less useful for infrastructure.

Part II applies in large part to growing cities. Growth creates demand for new infrastructure while straining existing core infrastructure. Alternative …

The Lawyer Who Built Titletown: Gerald Clifford, The Green Bay Packers And Community Ownership, 14 U. Denv. Sports & Ent. L.J. 3 (2013), Maureen Collins

Maureen B. Collins

No abstract provided.

Improving The Image And Legal Status Of The Burial Services Industry, Marvin M. Moore

Akron Law Review

The purpose of this article is to examine the reasons advanced for excluding funeral parlors and graveyards from predominantly residential neighborhoods, the legal devices most commonly employed to accomplish such exclusion, and the propriety of using the police powers of the state to bar a land use that may not always threaten to thwart any of the recognized aims that the police powers are intended to promote. Finally, the article will recommend some practical steps that operators of mortuaries and cemeteries might take in order to gain more public acceptance. To the extent that the law merely reflects the values, …

Privatizing Eminent Domain: The Delegation Of A Very Public Power To Private, Non-Profit And Charitable Corporations , Asmara Tekle Johnson

Asmara M. Tekle

In an age of privatization of many governmental functions such as health care, prison management, and warfare, this Article poses the question as to whether eminent domain should be among them. Unlike other privatized functions, eminent domain is a traditionally governmental and highly coercive power, akin to the government’s power to tax, to arrest individuals, and to license. It is, therefore, a very public power. In particular, the delegation of this very public power to private, non-profit and charitable corporations has escaped the scrutiny that for-profit private actors have attracted in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in …

Federalizing Public Education, Thomas Kleven

Thomas Kleven

This article assesses the case for federalizing public education in the United States. The starting point is a conception of democracy I call equitable sharing, meaning that the goods of social life must be equitably distributed among all society’s members. I argue that equitable sharing mandates society to ensure that all children have access to a relatively equal educational opportunity—i.e., a comparable opportunity to advance educationally as far as their abilities, interests and willingness to strive allow—at least through elementary and secondary school. To set the stage for discussing the merits of federalization, I examine various models through which society …

Private Property, The Takings Clause And The Pursuit Of Market Gain, Charles H. Clarke

Akron Law Review

This Article proposes a fair return model for the takings clause. This conception of the clause has been an operating principle of welfare capitalism for decades. The Article rejects the model of laissez faire capitalism that once dominated the landscape of the nation's constitutional system and may come back again.

Foreground Principles, Timothy M. Mulvaney

Timothy M. Mulvaney

The U.S. Supreme Court has declared for decades that, for Takings Clause purposes, property interests are not created by the Constitution but rather are determined by “existing rules or understandings that stem from an independent source such as state law.” However, the Court has exhibited a strong normative preference for a certain type of independent source — “background principles” of the common law — over others, namely state statutory and administrative law. This Article calls this preference into question. The Article develops a model to demonstrate the four basic categories, or quadrants, of takings decisions that extensive reliance on the …

Preventing Franchise Flight: Could Cleveland Have Kept The Browns By Exercising Its Eminent Domain Power?, Steven R. Hobson Ii

Akron Law Review

The purpose of this Comment is to analyze whether Ohio law would allow for such a taking, and to determine if such action would have solved the problem of keeping the Browns in Cleveland. In analyzing this issue and focusing on the difficulties that such a taking would create, it will be demonstrated that this taking probably cannot be achieved successfully, and that some congressional intervention is needed to rectify the franchise relocation problem.

Scalia, Property, And Dolan V. Tigard: The Emergence Of A Post-Carolene Products Jurisprudence, David Schultz

Akron Law Review

This Article proposes an analysis of Scalia's views on property rights and shows how the Justice has been important to, if not the leader in, the current rethinking of takings and land use jurisprudence." Also, this Article will engage in a more comprehensive reevaluation of the jurisprudence of the Carolene Products Era that is transpiring both off and on the Court. While previous works have examined Rehnquist's and his Court's views on property, as well as Scalia's views on expressive freedoms criminal due process, and church/state issues, there is no comprehensive discussion addressing Scalia's views on property rights. To accomplish …

Exactions For The Future, Timothy M. Mulvaney

Timothy M. Mulvaney

New development commonly contributes to projected infrastructural demands caused by multiple parties or amplifies the impacts of anticipated natural hazards. At times, these impacts only can be addressed through coordinated actions over a lengthy period. In theory, the ability of local governments to attach conditions, or “exactions,” to discretionary land use permits can serve as one tool to accomplish this end. Unlike traditional exactions that regularly respond to demonstrably measurable, immediate development harms, these “exactions for the future” — exactions responsive to cumulative anticipated future harms — admittedly can present land assembly concerns and involve inherently uncertain long-range government forecasting. …

Uncertainties Remain For Judicial Takings Theory, Timothy M. Mulvaney

Timothy M. Mulvaney

The U.S. Supreme Court waded into the waters of judicial takings last summer with a divided opinion that effectively carries no precedential value but is likely to have lower courts and property scholars trying to decipher its meaning for many years to come.

In Stop the Beach Renourishment, Inc. v. Florida Department of Environment Protection, 130 S. Ct. 2592 (2010), the Court decided that some Florida gulf-front property owners are not entitled to compensation under the federal Constitution’s Takings Clause when a state beach restoration project separates their private property from the water’s edge. Although the state prevailed in this …

Proposed Exactions, Timothy M. Mulvaney

Timothy M. Mulvaney

In the abstract, the site-specific ability to issue conditional approvals offers local governments the flexible option of permitting a development proposal while simultaneously requiring the applicant to offset the project’s external impacts. However, the U.S. Supreme Court curtailed the exercise of this option in Nollan and Dolan by establishing a constitutional takings framework unique to exaction disputes. This exaction takings construct has challenged legal scholars on several fronts for the better part of the past two decades. For one, Nollan and Dolan place a far greater burden on the government in justifying exactions it attaches to a development approval than …

The Remnants Of Exaction Takings, Timothy M. Mulvaney

Timothy M. Mulvaney

This article explores the ability of local governments to impose discretionary permit conditions, or "exactions, " to offset the burdens that new development places upon existing infrastructure and the environment. Over fifteen years ago, in Nollan v. California Coastal Commission and Dolan v. City of Tigard, a deeply divided U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment significantly restricts this governmental authority, for the clause requires the judiciary to apply a more stringent level of scrutiny in reviewing permit conditions than is accorded outright permit denials. These "regulatory takings " decisions provide land use regulators with …

Nonjudicial Foreclosure Under Deed Of Trust May Be A Fraudulent Transfer Of Bankrupt's Property: Durrett V. Washington National Insurance Co., Franklin G. Snyder

Franklin G. Snyder

In theory, the substantive rights of secured creditors such as mortgagees are affected much less by bankruptcy proceedings than those of unsecured creditors. In practice, however, bankruptcy proceedings have affected mortgagees. Filing a bankruptcy petition automatically stays pending foreclosures. Trustees in bankruptcy also can set aside foreclosures of certain liens obtained by unsecured creditors and certain mortgages and deeds of trust executed in the year preceding bankruptcy. The decision in Durrett adds yet another weapon to the bankruptcy trustee's arsenal: the power to void nonjudicial foreclosure sales even though the sale is proper and final under state law.

Responsibility, Causation, And The Harm-Benefit Line In Takings Jurisprudence, Glynn S. Lunney Jr

Glynn Lunney

As one of the guarantees provided in the Bill of Rights, the Fifth Amendment's Compensation Clause restricts government's otherwise largely plenary power over privately-held property rights. While the Compensation Clause does not directly limit government's ability to change, modify, or even eliminate existing privately-held property rights, in certain instances it circumscribes government's ability to force individual property owners to bear the cost of such government-imposed changes. Specifically, for those government-imposed property redistributions found to be "takings" within the meaning of the Compensation Clause, the Fifth Amendment requires federal and state governments to compensate the property holder for the taking, and …

Review Of Jesse Dukeminier And James E. Krier, Property (4th Edition 1998), Andrew P. Morriss

Andrew P. Morriss

In this review, I will concentrate on two perspectives on the book. I first taught Property in the spring 1998 semester (using the third edition of Dukeminier and Krier) and am (as I write this) about to begin my second year of teaching the course. I can thus give the perspective of a new teacher of the subject. In addition, I am an economist as well as a lawyer and am deeply fascinated by legal history. I try to bring both law and economics and historical perspectives to my teaching. I therefore offer an evaluation of the book with respect …

Exactions For The Future, Timothy M. Mulvaney

Timothy M. Mulvaney

New development commonly contributes to projected infrastructural demands caused by multiple parties or amplifies the impacts of anticipated natural hazards. At times, these impacts only can be addressed through coordinated actions over a lengthy period. In theory, the ability of local governments to attach conditions, or “exactions,” to discretionary land use permits can serve as one tool to accomplish this end. Unlike traditional exactions that regularly respond to demonstrably measurable, immediate development harms, these “exactions for the future” — exactions responsive to cumulative anticipated future harms — admittedly can present land assembly concerns and involve inherently uncertain long-range government forecasting. …

Article 9 And The Characterization And Treatment Of Tenant Security Deposits, William H. Henning, R. Wilson Freyermuth

William H. Henning

No abstract provided.

Waterlocked: Public Access To New Jersey's Coastline, Timothy Mulvaney, Brian Weeks

Timothy M. Mulvaney

No abstract provided.

The Rhetorics Of Taking Cases: It's Mine V. Let's Share, Susan Ayres

Susan Ayres

Regulatory takings cases originated in 1922 when Justice Holmes, in Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, ruled that "while property may be regulated to a certain extent, if a regulation goes too far it will be recognized as a taking." This simple rule has resulted in over eighty years of case law that Carol Rose states has left takings law to "muddle along." While many legal scholars decry the incoherence and inconsistency of takings case law, this article provides a rhetorical analysis that explains the "muddle" as a result of rhetorical tensions between a Sophistic approach ("Let's Share") and an Aristotelian …